[clue-tech] Top down

[Chris Tubutis]

On 24 Apr, mike havlicek wrote:
> This policy of top down design seems kinda silly...

For some things, yes, it can be irritating. It seems that 99.998% of the
people in the world compose personal e-mail in the top-down fashion, I
can count on one hand the number of people I know who like to compose
personal e-mail in the bottom-posting fashion.

> It seems that the new info would be more relevant.

True to say, when I'm e-mailing with somebody I know or work with, I
like to have the most relevant information on the top. But that's
because, when I see who the message is from, I already have a good idea
of what they're referring to (assuming we're talking about an
already-established topic).

But that's not at all the case with list-based e-mail where multiple,
unknown people and several topics & threads are involved. Some of us are
on several lists and receive literally hundreds of messages a day. And
some people have their Inboxes sorted by most recent first (newest
messages are the first to be read). Not all of us have Broadband or even
a modern, "fast" modem or even unlimited Internet access. Not all of us
use Outlook or a Web browser to read mail, or even a GUI-based mail
client.

Netiquette involves more than just top-posting vs. bottom-posting but
also trimming out irrelevant & excess text (especially signatures and
extra cruft automatically added by list software). Quote only pertinent
points you are responding to.

For a good example, look at the Gilligan's Island example at
<http://members.fortunecity.com/nnqweb/nquote.html>; although these
"rules" and this Netiquette stuff originated mainly in Usenet
newsgroups, the same concepts apply to e-mail lists (which are basically
newsgroup messages that end up in your Inbox).

ct